Bone Idle Gossip: Off to the Eastern Bloc (is that the bit near the Milton End?) and beyond

Pompey fans react to Burgess decision

OKAY folks, this is the last column about Pompey teams with themes*, writes Steve Bone.

This week’s challenge came from Scott Harris, who asked for a Baltic Pompey XI, and Graham Dubber, who wanted a Southern Hemisphere XI.

I must confess geography isn’t my strong point (I thought the Eastern Bloc was the section nearest the Milton End) so I to had look up which countries could be described as Baltic.

I also thought the Baltic Sea was just a tad bigger than Baffins Pond but it turns out it’s ginormous and has about 28 countries around it – yet the only three nations officially called ‘Baltic states’ are Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia. So I was, shall we say, relaxed about which nationalities were allowed into this XI.

Ant Coombes, fast becoming an expert at meeting these challenges, admitted: “It’s a shame Denmark isn’t a bit further east, and the Eastern Bloc isn’t a bit further north – then we’d have no problem.”